And You Caused It
by sugardemonxo
Summary: His drunken thoughts were nails in his own coffin and she was the hammer. Unrequited ShikaIno.
**A/N: I think this is the first ShikaIno fic I've ever posted, and in fact probably the first Naruto fic I've ever posted. I'm still not 100% up-to-date with canon so if there's anything I got wrong please try to forgive me. All I know is that I saw Ino & Sai's wedding photo on tumblr and that I had a lot of feelings and Shikamaru probably did too. I hope I did well and that you like it! As always, thank you for reading! Suffer with me.**

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He drank his sake, smoked his cigarettes, did what was expected of him without too much grumbling. He played shogi and won. He was good at his job, married a girl who wasn't too pretty or too ugly and had a kid on the way. He had done things the right way; Done them the way he was supposed to. That's what he had to tell himself on nights when he was drinking alone and every time he had to see his former teammate.

She was a woman now, definitely too pretty. She was married and happy with her family now and Shikamaru was still drinking about the day he felt her slip away.

It would probably always be this way, he thought. Leaving the village on missions, getting piss drunk by himself in unfamiliar places and thinking about perfectly gathered tendrils spun from pure platinum, tangling him up and swallowing him whole. He'd always preferred platinum to gold. He'd always preferred the way that her ferocity did not lie in her face or her body language or even in her words; Ino's fire was her way of being. She was such a complicated, terrifying woman, and somehow still so gentle. Even her cruelest words were laced with a sweetness that Temari probably didn't know existed.

She knew that men had egos that needed polished from time to time; a notion that Temari would rid the world of completely when Shikamaru could not even rid it from himself. She had never said as much, but he suspected that he was not actually Temari's kind of man, and they were just so deep into it now that they were both too embarrassed to speak up. And Ino was so happy.

He saw Ino once when she was pregnant. He never knew something could make him want to cry tears of joy and of bitterness all at once like that. She glowed. She glowed in general, but he was pretty sure she was the resident sunshine of Konoha in those 9 long months. He avoided her as often as he could without being obvious.

He thought he was doing the right thing, he thought he was doing the easy thing. Shikamaru would be the first to tell you that in his genius and his love of simplicity, he was a coward. He took the easy way every chance he got. This was where simplicity had lead him. Alcohol was less of a social experience, more of a means to an end. When he fell asleep drunk and alone with wet eyes was the closest he ever felt to Ino now; the closest he would ever be again.

He had spent all those years telling himself what he wanted and had somehow convinced himself that Ino didn't fit into that box. Too pretty, that's for sure. Too complicated, too bossy. He had known her for his whole life, they had been children together, she was like his little sister who needed protected. The pain in his chest had nothing to do with her.

He remembered the fire he once felt for Temari. She was just right looking and she thought he was funny. She would banter with him and she never missed a beat but now he couldn't stand the way he had to wake her up more than once before she would get up and how now her sarcastic, biting comments felt more like attacks than banter, and he knew it wasn't fair but he resented her for not being the sunshine and for never smelling like flowers. She left golden strands in the bed and on his clothes and her fingernails were never somehow, as if by magic, perfect and beautiful and shining the way that Ino's were despite everything.

He drank and drank and drank and thought about how different their eyes were and how he should love his wife and if he could make himself he would. He remembered Ino joking about his new girlfriend and teasing him all the time. The closer he got to Temari, the further he felt from her. At the time, he thought it was a good thing, and the pain in his chest had nothing to do with her.

He hated the way he always smelled like stale cigarettes and booze, even when he was clean. He somehow still had a respectable reputation, but if people knew him maybe he wouldn't. He was supposed to be brilliant, a genius, but he couldn't seem to stop fucking everything up. He didn't know how to be an adult. He didn't know how to love his wife and he didn't know how to be a good enough father and he didn't know how to fix it; how to fix himself. Any uncertainty he had in life, any comfort he needed became ammunition for Temari to shoot him with. He was the man, he was supposed to take care of her.

He wasn't supposed to carry another woman's wedding photo with him, he wasn't supposed to buy his wife flowers in the hopes of seeing the one his heart really wanted. He wasn't supposed to cry at night, at all, and he was not supposed to be unsure or need help. He wanted to run from his life but knew he had no choice now. He had ruined everything, he had ruined his life. He was so tired, lines were starting to grow in his face and maybe nobody else noticed, but sometimes he thought he could feel them. He didn't like his favorite things anymore and sake had no taste. He felt like a cockroach and could barely stand to be around Chouji now. People said a lot of things about him and how smart he was, but Chouji could always tell what he was thinking and that either meant he was transparent or that his former best friend was just as smart as he was.

He couldn't risk Chouji knowing, he couldn't drop his facade and let someone in because that would mean the end of everything. Shikamaru wasn't quite sure he could outlast the end of the world. He knew if he started spending a lot of time with Chouji again, there'd be no reason not to invite Ino too, besides the obvious, secret one. He'd either have to hurt someone's feelings or sit across a table from a woman he loved more than his wife and he wasn't sure he could do either so he folded the thought and put it away.

Ino was the catalyst of his impending downfall. Would the stress kill him? Even at his worst, he wasn't strictly a suicidal guy. Maybe he'd care less about getting hit, about what happened to him, but he didn't necessarily want to make himself die. Death was his only way out of the mess he'd created, he was sure of that much, at least. If he could go back, maybe he'd settle down with his too-pretty best childhood friend at a young age, the future of Team 10 could be damned, maybe he'd teach or something instead of this whole war-hero thing, definitely drink less, might even quit smoking if she asked him to. He could learn to cook something besides eggs and try understanding the language of flowers, maybe try his hand at arrangements for her once in a while like some kind of cheesy romantic gesture. She'd always said he had an eye for color. He wasn't an artist or anything, but he was pretty sure he could make her smile sometimes and buy her a lot of pretty things. He was pretty sure being trapped in that until death would be okay, even if she did make his chest hurt. He would forgive her.

He was glad he had no immediate way to contact her when things were like this. He was glad he knew better than to send word back to her when he was away, how foreign and unfair it would be for her to know she was on his drunken mind days before. It was funny, he thought, of all the things he'd messed up, she was safe. He never messed her up, and he had the presence of mind at least not to mess up her life.

That was a small comfort, at least. He was sure she had enough of her own problems, being a parent was hard and her mom was probably pressuring her to stay at home and do "the womanly thing" or something, and she was probably rebelling by throwing herself into her work as hard as she could. It felt so strange to think of how everyone had grown and changed, it was strange to think of how she was keeping him from sleeping at night, keeping him from being able to live his life it seemed, and he probably never crossed her mind much anymore. If anything, she was surely mad at him for dissolving out of her life instead of filling the role of Uncle Shika to her son. That was best, probably, for her to be mad. It made everything easier on him.

It made guilt flood his senses to think of all the friends he'd stopped palling around with. He felt so distant from everything and it was not right. How an insufferable ass like him managed to make all those friends at the time was nothing short of a miracle, he wasn't the most likeable guy and he knew it, and now here he was taking all of it, everything, for granted. It wasn't right.

So he drank his sake and he smoked his cigarettes, wrote a letter to his wife before he got drunk enough to drown in thoughts of the woman he actually loved. He drank until he had trouble standing, and maybe if he'd had a friend they would've wrapped his arm around their shoulders and helped him back to his temporary bed, the one he liked more than the place he'd chosen to rest his head until his eventual end, but he made it there fine on his own and he was able to somehow engineer his shoes off of his feet without excessive force and he got comfortable on his own and laid sleepless with wet eyes, thinking about platinum and roses and shining fingernails and sunshine.

He knew when he woke up too early he would be hungover and elected to deal with that when it came, maybe someday the hangover would be enough to convince him to stop getting drunk and looking at another woman's wedding photo but tonight she was beautiful and almost his and if he closed his eyes and thought hard enough it felt like going back in time and that was enough. It was all he had left, so it had to be enough. And when he went back home and when his son was born he would try to love his wife and he would try to be a dad and he would decide whether or not he would reconnect with his friends and suffer or if he would keep avoiding everyone because he was so intent on avoiding her.

He fell asleep thinking maybe he wouldn't take the easy way and maybe, if he worked really hard, or was a great father and husband, or threw himself into his work, one day he'd know how to do all of this. But tonight, maybe for the last time or maybe just for the millionth, he fell asleep clutching another woman's wedding photo, and if his chest hurt it had everything to do with her.


End file.
